


Christmas Eve in Jail

by Pathfinder (Coffeeaftermidnight)



Series: Horrors au [3]
Category: Creepypasta - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Religious Discussion, horrors au, twist ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coffeeaftermidnight/pseuds/Pathfinder
Summary: Christmas Eve, and Liu is resting in a holding cell after another of Sully's rampages. Despite being tired, the cynical man can't help but be drawn into conversation by the man beside him...Set in the Horrors AU, a dystopian au where creepypastas, known as Horrors, have killed a third of the population of the country, and are in a bitter battle with both humanity and against the Slenderman, who preys on all. For more information, headcanons and other fics, check out world-of-horrors-au on Tumblr
Series: Horrors au [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537990
Kudos: 16





	Christmas Eve in Jail

It was cold air blowing through the bars of the holding cells. Christmas Eve, and for all the partying that holiday used to be known for, there were only two people in the drunk tank. Far as Liu knew, he wasn’t drunk. But if the guy next to him was, god, he was a talkative one.

Started off simple - “Your name is Sully, right?”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Liu hadn’t looked away from the ceiling, his voice empty of the anger that would normally be in a sentence like that.

“You said it to the officer. I just overheard.”

The man was pacing in his cell, walking back and forth. It was almost hypnotic. Liu would’ve fallen into blissful sleep, if the man would’ve shut up.

“Thirty-one years old, spending so special a holiday in jail - do you have anywhere else to be?”

There was no malice in the man’s words. Empty curiosity and assumed knowledge behind it. Liu knew conversations like this.

“Not really.” He shrugged. The berth he lied on was uncomfortable, but not the worst thing he’d ever rested on. “It’s just Christmas Eve anyway. Nothing important.”

“I remember when it was the most important holiday of the human year.” The stranger’s voice held no familiar wistfulness about that fact. He said it the way Liu would say the time. “Before the Horrors… existed.”

All conversations went back to them. Like water to the sea, every mind went back to the Horrors in time.

“So, who’d they take from you?” Liu asked. The pain was curled deep in every person’s soul, the loss, the grief, the rage. Answering could be therapeutic to some.. And the pain they expressed fueled him.

The man on the other side of the wall, he sighed. The click of dress shoes on tile stopped.

“My children,” the stranger said. “They are dead. And the rest are like lost sheep, wandering in a world they cannot understand alone.”

Liu frowned. “You a preacher?”

Another hesitation, and a hint of a smile when the man spoke again. “I am… religiously tied, yes. Not quite a pastor, not really a bishop. I am what I am, isn’t that what their so called Savior said?”

“So you lost faith like most people did.” Liu rolled over on his side. “Good. Fairy tales are dangerous.”

“Fairy tales were dangerous,” and this time Liu blinked at the edge in the stranger’s voice. “Defanged, separated from their original context and creators, corrupted by greed and good intentions.” And a kind of smile returned in the voice. “But am I really talking about stories like Cinderella and Snow White? Or am I talking about faith?”

“They’re the same,” Liu said.

“In the sense that both stories end with justice given fairly? Perhaps. But for all your cynicism, the two cannot be compared. The truths they share are very different.”

Liu sighed, covering his eyes with his hands. He hated talking about religion - any religion, from the Old Three to the returning ones. “And those truths are useless against Horrors.”

The man didn’t answer that. Dress shoes clicked on tile, the bed on the other side of the wall creaked.

“Sully,” the man asked, “Are you a Horror?”

The air froze in Liu’s lungs, and a chill rushed down his back.

“I don’t care if you are,” the man said, “I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t think that you are… evil. No. I don’t think you’re evil at all.”

“Why’s that?” Liu said, his eyes looking into nothing.

“I heard what they said you were taken in for. You got between a man and his wife. She had the baby, he had a knife. There were kids screaming on the side of the road. You saw it… and you didn’t think twice, did you? Now he’s in the hospital, and you’re in here.”

Liu looked at his hand. Blood hadn’t seeped through the bandages. The wound had probably already healed.

“The Horrors I know don’t help others,” the stranger said. “They don’t get between a mother and a knife. They hunt. They kill. They destroy. So what are you, Sully?”

There was no good answer to this question. Nothing that happened tonight was out of the kindness of his, or Sully’s, heart.

“Me,” Liu said, and rolled onto his stomach. He gripped his shaggy hair (the same color as his baby brother’s) with his long fingers. “Why are you asking so many questions?”

“Because I want to understand.” The man stood, the dress shoes paced. “Something has gone terribly wrong. Can’t you sense it? Nothing done by the Divine can be wrong - but this. Is. Wrong. All of them are wrong! They were wrong to believe you were a curse, and they were wrong to believe you were a savior. How are you so different from the others? Why are they so different from me?”

Something like a fist slammed against the metal bars of the cell beside him.

“Where… have I gone wrong?”

Liu sat up. His mouth opened to form the words, to ask the question burning through his head, ‘ _who the fuck are you?_ ’-

A distant door slammed open. From the outside world, winter boots stomped inside.

“Liu Collingwood?”

The officer stopped at his door. Behind him, a woman in a heavy black coat, a man in a trench. Two of his handlers. Liu relaxed. Time to go home.

They loaded him in the back of a car. Exhaustion was kicking in. Liu accepted the bottle of iced coffee from the woman, and two pills from the man, and downed both without a fight. The car drove through the streets towards the highway, and through the dark tinted window, Liu admired the silvery world beyond.

“Hell of a Christmas present you gave us today,” the man said. “Scared us half to death this time, Sully.”

“Liu,” he corrected, and closed his eyes. 

“Right, right, sorry,” the man mumbled. Liu sighed. “Pretty nice place they put you in, though. You had the whole ward to yourself.”

Opening his eyes, Liu looked up at the front, and the man in the passenger seat.

“What about the pastor?”

The woman glanced at him through the rearview mirror, frowning. “What?”

“There was another person in there. A man. I think he was wearing a suit.” Liu frowned back. “He kept talking about religion… figured he was taken in for loitering…”

The man and woman glanced at each other, and Liu recognized the look in their eyes. The man looked back at him.

“There was no one else in there, Liu,” the man said. “They said they hadn’t brought in anyone all day.”

In the window, Liu glanced at his reflection on the darkened glass. His face slowly draining of color, the old stitched up scars flooding red on his face. Liu closed his eyes and said nothing more that night.


End file.
